Korea's leader Kim Jong-un is the hands down favorite to win this year's Caligula Memorial "Crazy as a Loon" trophy for dictators. ... A trust affiliated with Microsoft founder Bill Gates has been fined $30,000 for the way it handled horse manure at his estate in South Florida. Rumors were that the fine also related to the creation of Windows 8. ... Donald Trump said in announcing his plans to run for the GOP presidential nomination his background in owning casinos was a perfect qualification for leading the nation.

Avalara has acquired VAT Applications, a company based in Belgium that develops the iVAT suite of applications. It is the latest in a series of acquisitions Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based Avalara has made in the indirect tax market. This year, the sales and use tax company has already acquired to specialized indirect tax companies, HotSpot Tax and EZtax. VAT Applications was founded by CEO Patrick Wille in December 2000. The iVAT Suite includes VAT determination and compliance products.

Sage is renaming its midmarket product of the future at the end of next month. Sage ERP X3 will become Sage X3 on July 27. Hallelujahs were said by headline writers everywhere. A Sage product news update says customers react to ERP as being too difficult, complex and expensive while Sage is pushing X3 as faster, simpler and flexible. I thought putting ERP in the name is clunky and also that end users don't know what ERP is. Once I told a friend that and she responded "When we talk about ERP, users just look at us.